The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin
“The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea” - Isak Dinesen
[This was originally written in the summer of 1998, although I can't recall if it was for a parish newsletter or some other publication. Anyway, it's a good day to get in the water, for all sorts of reasons, regardless of weather or temperature.]
It arrives every summer. It's a package that is usually mailed from a barrier island in southern New Jersey. It can be a heavy package. Even though it’s an annual event, I often forget that it’s coming, so it can be a surprise.
In the package is a container, sometimes a used soda bottle, sometimes an inexpensive dime-store thermos, filled with seawater.
It is, as anyone would agree, a strange gift to receive. Certainly, my wife felt that way the first summer of our marriage when she got to the mail before I did.
"Your mother sent us some...water, I think."
It was difficult to recognize the opaque greenness. Seawater does not travel well in the summer heat. It grows things during transit.
Maybe that's the point.
The reason that she sent it to me and has done so for as long as I've lived away from home is because of August 15th. Well, that’s the secular date. On the church calendar, it’s the Feast of the Assumption of St. Mary the Virgin.
On this day, all the seawater in the world is holy water.
There are many pious stories as to why this is so. The most plausible is the lyrical understanding that, as she ascended to the Kingdom, the Blessed Virgin Mary shed tears of compassion for those in the world. These tears mingled with the sea as she rose, thus granting the water a holy essence. In some cultures, the 15th is known as dies salis aqua, or “saltwater day.”
To this day, in seashore areas around the continent of Europe, families make their pilgrimage to the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. While others frolic in the water in recreation, Christians do so on the Feast of the Assumption as part of their spiritual re-creation.
They seek to be reminded of the ways in which we are borne by God; immersed in the great, deep, and liberating mystery. They find themselves, as we all do, afloat on grace; ever present, ever abiding, and all surrounding.
The connection between water and holiness is ancient and complicated. As is water with our physical being, God is the key element of our spiritual being. God is necessary for our life and present with us in a multiplicity of forms. As with water, so with God; things grow in the relationship.
Joseph Conrad, before he became one of the greatest writers in the English language, was a commercial ship’s captain. He once wrote "...the sea is a mystery, deep and impenetrable. We are borne on it, knowing it as impassive yet passionate. We can never completely know it as we cannot completely know the Almighty."
Once a year, my mother travels to the ocean, steps into the water, fills containers for my sibling, my nieces, my nephew, and me. We get them right before the beginning of the school year (as I’m from a family of educators, the new year begins in September) as reminders of that ancient relationship.
Last year it was a soda bottle sealed with duct tape. In a filtered state, it will be part of the holy water that I use in baptisms and at the Great Vigil of Easter. I do this to honor the feast day and because there are occasions when I need to mark the unfolding mystery that surrounds us and the grace that supports us.
It’s also because, as I am reminded every year at this time, things grow in it.
O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
What great memories this evokes for me. While I don't recall any receptacles of water from Gramma, I do fondly recall her always saying, "We must stand in the ocean to make us strong for the year." I remember walking her down to the water from her beach chair, hand firmly on my arm, and standing with her to make sure she wasn't swept out to sea. Thank you for the lovely post!